


An Uphill Climb

by Simply_Isnt_On



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M, Pete's World, Pregnancy, mention of ob/gyn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-30
Updated: 2014-11-30
Packaged: 2018-02-27 14:26:30
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 918
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2696300
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Simply_Isnt_On/pseuds/Simply_Isnt_On
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rose wakes up not long after going to bed, scared to look around her dark room. This is normal.</p>
            </blockquote>





	An Uphill Climb

**Author's Note:**

> Had a bit of a panic attack last night, and I happened to be looking at a friend's response to a tag-drabble I wrote on tumblr. I was going to write shmoop, but it wasn't to be, and here we are.

Rose wakes up not long after going to bed, scared to look around her dark room. This is normal.

 **Fact:**  It has been four weeks since Rose moved in with her dad who's not her dad.

 **Observation:** Pete isn't used to people. 

Oh, he smiles, and welcomes them in, and he was very quick to get them each their own rooms with views and bathrooms. He even let Jackie pick a new master bedroom, and for all that they claim not to know each other, Rose can see them fall into place like puzzle pieces.

But the man has simply never had reason to be used to people. Jackie II hadn't been the type to get up at three AM for a cuppa, and Rose II was a dog. On top of which, it had never been Pete's intention to have a large family, so the acoustics in the house carry the noise of three Cockney accents better than any flat in London. And it's clear from the guilty looks the three exchange regularly that they're all well aware of the disturbance they cause in Pete's orderly life.

Rose would get a flat and move out, but getting a job is hard without an ID, even without the days when getting out of bed is a trial in and of itself.

 **Fact:** Rose told the Doctor that Tony was her brother.

 **Observation:** He has the Doctor's eyes.

It wasn't three days after that day on the beach that Rose begins to vomit at the smell of lilacs and fried eggs, scents Jackie had filled the house with in an attempt to cheer her up. A day after that, when Rose refuses yet again to come down to dinner, and Jackie presents her with a pee stick.

Two weeks later their positions are reversed, and they attend their first prenatal appointment together. Somehow having her mum hold her hand while an elderly gentlemen prods at her bits makes the experience less traumatic.

 **Fact:** Rose is an adult and too old for irrational fears.

 **Observation:** Her room on the TARDIS was always full of light.

Rose grew up with her bed facing a window, and for three years early on her mum couldn't afford curtains. The yellow of the streetlamps mixing with the shadows of her room were her bedtime stories when Jackie worked late, and even when they got curtains later on, Rose slept with them open.

Her very first night on the TARDIS after she missed the end of the world, she left the bathroom light on when she went to bed and huddled beneath her blankets, hugging her knees to her chest and wishing for her shadow friends. When she woke the next morning, it should have been dark because there were no windows in her room. Instead, soft ambient light glowed from the corners of the ceiling in every hue of the rainbow, flickering and softening the edges of the dark.

When Pete gave her her room with a view, the window looked out on the empty, dark fields behind his house. After two restless nights, she asked Mickey and her mum for a hand while Pete was at work and moved her things to a room whose windows were directly below a security light. If she closed her eyes tight enough, she could feel the TARDIS hum in her bones.

 **Fact:** The Doctor left her in an alternate world.

 **Observation:** Sometimes he whispered from behind trees.

Rose took up walking, as her belly grew round and tight. Slowly, she would wander across Pete's sizable property, keeping to the wooded areas to avoid people trying to stop her and ask about how Mr. Tyler was handling the blow the Cybermen had taken on his company.

At first she thought she was going mad, and nearly twisted her ankle chasing achingly familiar laughter. When Jack appeared, whole and hale and entirely mortal, at her first trimester sonogram because her baby set off the rift monitors, she learned that there were places between the worlds that were thin enough to brush.

Sometimes, she would take a camera on her walks and imagine that the dappled sunlight of the afternoon on the compost-soft ground was the light of a star, burning up so he could tell her he loved her.

 **Fact:** He abandoned her again.

 **Observation:** The Time Lord was telepathic, and so was his twin.

She would have yelled at him for even suggesting that she stay in Pete's world, after she worked so long to get back to her own. But then she felt the brush of the clone's mind, the Doctor 2.0, and a wash of love so familiar it made her chest ache.

The Doctor's face was comical when he met Myra, and he stared at this little girl with glossy black hair and bright blue eyes. He sat down outright on the gravel driveway when Tony came running out after his aunt, barely a month older and babbling about "booey." Rose swept him into her arms and met the Doctor's eyes, and he smiled up at her, amazed and startled and with tears in his eyes.

"I was a father before," he said quietly, getting to his feet and hugging her gently. Tony buried his face in his mum's shoulder, and the Doctor glanced over at Myra, who was watching with interest.

 **Fact:** Myra was Tony's aunt.

 **Observation:** Their shared fifth birthday was infinitely more beautiful than their fourth. Tony's dad even came.


End file.
